Have you ever wondered why Google.com delivers different results for a user in the US than for a user in Germany? This is a question I recently had to answer for a client, and it would have been much easier to send him to a link than to spend half an hour trying to explain what many skilled SEOs already know.
For Web searchers though, the reasons are not so obvious. Of course, they can deduce that Google delivers results based on the geographic location of the searcher, which is determined by the IP address of the user. This is generally true for Google local domains too, like google.de or google.com.au, but, the IP address is not the only factor influencing search results. Also, many webmasters will be lost if this was the only factor determining search results in Google. Knowing some of the following, you will also know why search results vary from location to location, and how to optimize your pages to be relevant for your targeted audience.
- Top level domain name: it’s already common knowledge that TLDs are strongly weighted for local search results by Google. Other TLDs like .info, .tv, .biz are given less authority because of a large number of “spammy” sites with these extensions. TLDs with high authority seem to be .edu, .gov, .org and .mil. The most popular TLD remains .com and although it can be used by sites in any country, it still doesn’t guarantee that the rankings will not fluctuate in the Google SERPs. See below.
- Server location: as I said, .com can be used by anyone, but Google also takes into consideration the geographic location where the domain is hosted. A .com hosted in Australia is seen as an Australian site, whereas a .com hosted in Germany is seen as a German site. So, if you target an American audience for example, and you want to be given priority in the US search results, getting hosting in the US is a good move.
- Location of ITL (incoming text links). If your target is international try to get links from sites hosted in as many different countries as possible. The same is true if you target local audiences, get as many links from sites hosted in the country you target. For example, if most of your links come from Australian sites Google will figure that the site is Australian one, or of interest to Australian searchers.
- Page language: it’s possible to rank for pages you translate in other languages too, even if your site is not hosted in the country whose language you target. In this situation the ranking factors include, aside language, encoding characters, and meta titles and descriptions, which should be translated too.
- Last but not least, take care how you set up your Google Webmaster Tools. When you sign up for this service, Google asks you to set up the geographic location of your site. You can also set this up at a later point, or edit it, but this option is not available for a country specific TLD like .de, .fr, etc. But for .com and other generic TLD sites, this Google Webmaster Tools setting replaces the server location signal and is particularly useful to set a different geo-location for each subdomain you want.
I hope this little primer on page relevance is helpful in understanding how Google reveals results for users, and how you can optimize your site for this variable. With so many factors to consider in SEO, using relevant but crucial tidbits like in these primers is one way to incrementally improve your search ranking easily and painlessly. Obviously everyone cannot change their domain name, server location, languages and links all at once, but those things that can be optimized, should be, if ranking in the search engines is important for your site.
thanks for the article. :)
May 4th, 2009 at 4:23 am
It bugs me that when I am searching for world wide results, Google still serves me Aussie results first. If I want Aussie results I will search Google Australia!!
I am going to check my Google Analytics settings now – although I have a .com and US server I may be classed as an Australian site and not perform so well in US searches.
May 4th, 2009 at 6:47 am
Great article, Miha :)
May 4th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Interesting article, I wasn`t aware of much of this! Definitely a good reason to look for US hosting, considering that I live in Guatemala, but my main audience is in North America.
May 4th, 2009 at 7:29 am
Are there any official links to prove this information? I’m not doubting you it’s just that there’s a lot of information posted online about SEO and you can never tell when exactly people are guessing or when they’re talking about solid facts. The things you say make sense, however I would still love proof in some form.
Thanks for the article!
May 4th, 2009 at 8:07 am
Any proofs? It’s already common knowledge that this is a myth. Please correct me if this is not the case any more.
Check out SitePoint Forums SEO FAQ for more:
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=356031
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=182915#Section37 (and #Section9)
May 4th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Oh, I qouted the one about pagerank, but the information is still there on the FAQ pages. Please check.
May 4th, 2009 at 11:23 am
I have always included my target region, cities, counties, etc. in the text of the home page of my sites, and I feel that I get good search ranking for my sites because of this.
May 4th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
If other site elements are optimised well, .info domains can still rank first in results, so don’t discount them completely.
May 4th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
@glenngould I am not talking about PageRank here, I am just talking about how Google delivers search results and what a webmaster can do to have better success in localizing his/her pages. Show me some cases where info, tv and biz appear before a com on Google’s first page.
Also, I am not talking about “link juice” but about link location. The FAQ you sent me to is irrelevant for this article – it contains no information on the topic. :)
May 4th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Hyena – that’s right. However, many authority SEO advise against these. See http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#f29
May 4th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
@skandalouz – there should be some other SEOs discussing this – I bet you’ll find something relevant on Matt Cutts http://www.dullest.com/blog/type/googleseo/
May 4th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Thanks, Mig. I certainly understand more than I did. Now if I could only get officially logged into my acct here at SitePoint, instead of it just teasing me. I logged in, the comment box announces that I am logged in, yet it in the comment preview page, it is posted that I am here an anonymous instead. If I could only conquer that, I’d have the world my the tail and be a very wealthy person living in Germany with my extended family.
TA and *hugs* to everyone!
Saboma
May 4th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Hi thanks for the great article. It certainly helps answer the question in regards to different results searchers are getting from google.com when they locate in different countries. I have always been asked the similar question.
It’s good to know that Geographic location you choose in Google Webmaster Tools will actuallly replace the server signal. Although I’ve always included a target city and country name on the homepage of the website and it helps rank ‘locally’.
May 4th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Okay, another quote from the SitePoint FAQ:
May 4th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Very useful post. Can you please explain the role of encoding characters in the page language section.
May 4th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Glenn, what are you trying to prove? As I said, this is not about which domain TLD is better and which ranks higher, it is about how Google delivers results to searchers from different locations and what webmasters can do to target their local audiences better. It’s common knowledge that .coms rank higher because of their popularity.I am not arguing that. Actually I am not arguing anything. Even the greatest SEO minds cannot agree upon the importance of TLDs http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#f29 – Graywolf, Stein, Claiborne, Aaron Wall agree that .edu and .gov get a boost for example. Other SEOs disagree. From personal experience, doing SEO since 2002, I can also tell you that edu and gov are regarded as trustworthy by most of the search engines. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate your input, but I base my observations on experience rather than theory. I know you understand.
May 4th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
I just want to make sure which point of view is true; do .edu and .gov domains really get a boost or not (in the SERPs).
May 5th, 2009 at 12:01 am
@ Glenn: it really depends. If properly optimized I think all sites have a good chance, regardless of TLD. As I said, there are SEOs who think gov and edu get boosted, others disagree. Remember that the TLD is just one of the factors influencing search results. There are hundreds more to add to this. I think an interesting discussion would be: which are the most important factors in 2009?
May 5th, 2009 at 12:45 am
@sta – character encoding is very important if you have a let’s say… Chinese site, Russian, etc. Also, even European languages have special characters (German, Danish, etc)
The character set you use also depends on your market – European, US, etc. Here is a big list http://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos8/TextIntlSvcs/TextEncodingConversionManager/TEC1.5/TEC.b0.html with character encodings ant their languages. Note that the document I linked at is very old – if someone has something newer, please post.
May 5th, 2009 at 2:41 am
another brilliant article. broken down so even the slow seo’s can understand it. i really like the organization in Mihaela’s writing. my sites pagerank went down but traffic went up..wtf?
So much of SEO is speculation so its important to gather all your information/facts together, then make up your own mind from intuition and perception as well as controlled tests.
May 5th, 2009 at 2:57 am
Thanks for this great article. I agree that location is another key in improving SEO
May 5th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
If i have a german site and a russian site, it means that i should use different character encodings for both. righ ? From
character encoding,does the browser or the search engine determine the language of the site ?
May 5th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
@Alexborsody – you are right, PageRank and search engine rankings are two different things. :) That’s why the traffic went up. The PR drop did not influence the SERPs. It happened to one of my personal blogs too: it had PR5 and now it is only 3. I know why it happened and I don’t sweat over it. It will take me some time to fix it now – I should probably write an article about what not to do if you don’t want your PR to drop.
But you are right: SEO is a great deal speculation, although I more often say that it is a trial and error process.
May 5th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
@sta – yes, you should use different character encodings.
When you determine the character encoding you send a signal to both Web browser and search bots regarding the language of the site. For more in depth information check these out:
http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/
http://niwo.mnsys.org/saved/~flavell/charset/checklist.html (this one is somehow clearer than the W3 link)
May 5th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Thanks for the great article :-)
May 5th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
This was a decent article, bit i was really looking for more.
There is more to relevance than the few things mentioned above. Incoming Links, Page Titles…etc
This just seems to describe geo-relevance.
You guys could write a small book about this subject if you really wanted.
May 5th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Thanks for the useful article, i go through whole discussion and i am totally agree with the details given in this article. These are very essential points which affect the rankings in local Google search rankings.
here i would like to share one point related to same topic, i have also heard that, the ip from which you are submitting your website in Google webmaster too is also affect the rankings in local search engine. I am not sure whether it is true or not, i would like to know your inputs.
May 5th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
@mkoenig: great idea about the book. ;) – and you are right, this article was only about geo-relevance.
May 5th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
@Jignesh – I doubt the IP of the submitter has anything to do with the ranking – considering that many people hire SEOs from different geo locations to take care of their sites. :)
May 5th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
google has lowered the weight of the top-level domain keywords. I have several sites on different different servers that used to come up number one and number 2 because of the keywords in the domain name. Now they don’t show up on the first 10 pages. The domain name itself has lost its fire.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:46 am
Of course this information was very helpful, Can you please advise if a .co.uk domain is hosted on a server in Germany what preference Google will give it?
May 6th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Location of website visitors with Google-Toolbar or Chrome could be another factor.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:10 am
I find this article very relevant and interesting. I agree with the comments on frustration from Google persisting to server links from Australia, even though I’m searching google.com :(
May 7th, 2009 at 11:51 am
I find this article very relevant and interesting. I agree with the comments on frustration from Google persisting to serve links from Australia, even though I’m searching google.com :( This is not good for web designers like us.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Thanks for these valuable informations!
May 10th, 2009 at 8:57 am
What a chance; lovely. cool stuff in a wonderful article.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Erm..
I don’t recall seeing anything regarding paid for rankings….
May 17th, 2009 at 11:14 pm